Under an AMOC collapse scenario, the researchers predict the waters of the North Atlantic would cool and sea ice would expand. Precipitation would increase over the tropical South Atlantic and Brazil while also decreasing over the North Atlantic tropics and Central America. Wei says the Greenland ice sheet may also expand, though the researchers did not explore this in the new model. “It shows climate change could be more abrupt than IPCC predictions,”

In order for the international monetary system established at Bretton Woods to function, the US is forced to run a permanent trade deficit with the rest of the world. Year after year, the US must purchase more from the rest of the world, than what the US sells to the rest of the world, thus creating a permanent flow of dollars to the rest of the world. This flow makes possible the creation of Monetary Reserves in the Central Banks of the rest of the world.

Already the effects of the fuel shock are adding to Mexico’s inflation. Under the impact of a price explosion in basic items, such as tortillas, beans and now fuel, adjusted for inflation, the new minimum wage represents a regression in living standards, in the space of one month.

US Foreign Policy and the Campaign to Destabilize the Trump Presidency

Obama has formally accused Moscow of interfering in the US elections on behalf of Donald Trump. These are serious allegations. Whereas the sanctions are directed against Russia, the ultimate intent is to undermine the legitimacy of president-elect Donald Trump and his foreign policy stance in relation to Moscow. The strategy is to delegitimize Donald Trump by accusing him of high treason.

in 1945, the United States had “literally half the world’s wealth, incredible security, controlled the entire Western Hemisphere, both oceans, [and[ the opposite sides of both oceans.” In that context – and in the context of the United States waging war in multiple countries across the globe with the most advanced military technology in the world – it is hard to understand how this has happened……. The United States has only one move left: surround Russia’s borders with NATO troops and missiles, which they are doing quite rapidly. Sooner or later, however, the United States will have to admit its very real decline in world standing and will have no choice but to learn to coordinate global affairs with the likes of Russia and China.

It now owns five of the world’s six largest solar-module manufacturing firms and the largest wind-turbine manufacturer and this dominance is rapidly spreading overseas, with the country accelerating its foreign investment in renewable energy and supporting technologies.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the man known as the “order’s pillar” (sotun-e nezam), died from a sudden heart attack on Sunday. He leaves behind a legacy as complicated and multifaceted as the order (and associated institutions) that he more than anyone else was responsible in erecting. Rafsanjani shaped most of the new institutions established by the Islamic Republic in 1979, from the office of the Leader to the Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Expediency Council (which he chaired almost from its inception until he died).

In the world of espionage, the “honeypot” is trap in which someone seduces an unsuspecting diplomat or embassy employee. Then the seducer – a “swallow” (woman) or a “raven” (man) – blackmails the dupe. The Obama administration claims that it has proof of Russian fingerprints on this operation and thus its influence on the November presidential elections. These charges are serious and should be investigated. But they are a distraction. The real operation Russia is conducting in the United States is an old-fashioned honeypot trap. But it’s not a conventional version of the scheme in which an attractive woman makes eyes at a lonely intelligence officer. Rather, the “raven” in this case is Vladimir Putin. And the dupe is Donald Trump.

In recent years, Trump has found it difficult to obtain loans from U.S. and Western banks to finance his real estate deals, and has been forced to look elsewhere for financing, first to junk bonds. Since 2000 or so, one of the ready sources of money has been the Russian oligarchs enriched after the privatization and looting of Russia’s public assets by Putin and his friends.

What all too many Americans simply do not want to confront is the fact when the national-security establishment was called into existence in the 1940s, it fundamentally altered America’s constitutional government structure in such a way that the military, the CIA, and, later the NSA, ended up becoming the most powerful branch of the federal government. We are taught that the federal government is divided into three branches — the legislative (Congress), the judicial, and the executive (the president). All that changed with the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state. For all practical purposes, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA became a fourth branch of government and ultimately the most powerful branch. Within a few weeks, Donald Trump will encounter that reality.

“This means that only 20 minutes in the highway rest area will be enough for a battery to be charged, eliminating the range anxiety of electric vehicle drivers. Mass production of the cell is slated for 2021.”